


Awkward introductions

by allthingspieandhockey (SunMonTue)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fake Dating, M/M, Trope Challenge, Week 3: fake dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 08:56:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunMonTue/pseuds/allthingspieandhockey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Holster is on the swim team rather than the hockey team and works in the library part-time. Ransom kind of implies to the hockey team that he’s dating someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awkward introductions

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the checkplease trope challenge except there isn’t very much fake dating in it really. Oops.  
> All Check Please characters etc. belong to Ngozi.

Ransom knows exactly when it started. It had just slipped out of his mouth. At the time it had been an innocent _yeah, I am seeing someone_ just to stop his mom from worrying (and asking over and _over_ again) and Shitty had overheard him. A couple of weeks later when pressed for deets by Shitty the name Adam had popped into his head. He’d known exactly why _that_ name had popped into his mind because he’d gone to a library tutorial just that day and Justin had maybe found himself crushing a little on the guy who took the tour.

He’s not an idiot so he does a little sleuthing and finds out that Adam is also a sophomore, is in the swim team, and does the 6-9pm shift at the library four nights a week. So, if he starts saying ‘ _I’m off to see Adam!’_ when he leaves the Haus it gives the guys an excuse to chirp him, which they’d be doing even more of if they knew he was actually going to the library to study.

It’s all _fine_ , until the team start asking when they get to meet him. They ask why he hasn’t come to any of the games. Ransom wonders if he should just admit that he made it all up, because that would be the adult and mature thing to do. Except what comes out of his mouth instead is;

“You’ll meet him at Winter Screw.”

Well _shit_.

…

Adam equally loves and hates working in the library. Some nights are great, and others are hell; but nearly every night can be improved by the appearance of Justin Oluransi. Adam had first spotted him in the library tutorial, and then the guy had come back most nights to study. Adam likes him – he’s quiet, puts the books back where they belong, and looks good while doing it.

He’d made it his business to find out who he was, and it hadn’t been hard with the Samwell Men’s Hockey t-shirt he’d been wearing the first time they’d crossed paths. Adam wonders if he’d have ended up playing hockey for Samwell if he hadn’t broken his leg when he was fourteen. Swimming had been part of his physiotherapy so he’d just stuck with that instead, although he still skates for fun now. And he goes and watches all the hockey games he can, when they don’t clash with a swim meet.

Tonight when Justin comes in though, rather than the half-smile-wave combo he usually gets Justin makes a beeline for him. Odd.

“Uh, Adam right?”

“Yep,” he replies, takes pity on the guy because he’s wearing a nametag even. He seems a little… stressed. “Are you okay dude?”

“Ah… well. Could you maybe help a dude out?”

“Sure, what do you need?” Adam asks, expecting a question about referencing styles, or inter-loans. Something library related.

“Go to Winter Screw with me?”

“Yes.”

“I – really bro?”

“Dude, did you not mean it?”

“Yes! Just… uh. This is going to sound stupid.” Adam’s heart sinks, suspecting he’s just been asked out as part of a dare or something equally ridiculous. “I kind of told my team that I’m already dating you.”

“Oh.” That’s… weird, but not as bad as he’d feared. “Why?”

“Uh, well, originally it was to get my mom off my back, and then the rest of the team thought I was, and I just never corrected them.”

“Why me specifically though?”

“Uh, well, I kind of see you regularly and I knew your name and… I think you’re hot?” Justin says, the last little bit said at barely a whisper.

“I think you’re hot too. Justin.”

“You know my name?”

Adam just shrugs in acknowledgement and the grin he gets back is blinding.

**Author's Note:**

> They go to Winter Screw and dance together and start… not-fake dating. Adam is totally on-board with making his team think they started dating earlier, just chirps Ransom about it in private. Ransom doesn’t care, he gets to bring Adam up into his attic space and make-out with him for hours. Until Adam reminds him that he should study, making sure he eats while he studies and isn’t interrupted. Calms him down when his anxiety reaches a peak. The rest of the team think he’s awesome (and grateful that he’s not an LAX bro, because Ransom had never mentioned that Adam was also a Samwell athlete). The team nickname him Holster, it slips out easily, as easily as dude and bro, and he gets called an honorary hockey player. Adam gets saved for quiet private conversations and he can’t believe how lucky he got.


End file.
